By William “Skip” Deegans
Fifty years ago this week, West Virginia native Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in San Francisco. Firing a 38-caliber pistol while Ford was existing the St. Francis Hotel, her shot was deflected by an ex-Marine. Moore was immediately apprehended.
Moore was born Sara Jane Kahn in Charleston in 1930 where her parents were musicians. She attended local public schools and graduated in 1947 from Stonewall Jackson High School where she played the violin and had a prominent role in a school play. From all accounts she was a very bright student. After graduation she enrolled in a nursing program but left before finishing and enrolled in the U. S. Army. Her first two husbands (of four or five) were apparently in the military. With her second husband, they had three children whom Moore abandoned and sent to be raised by her mother in Charleston.
She lived in California where she and her physician husband were divorced. Following the divorce Moore moved to the Mission District in San Francisco where she began an association with radical organizations, including the Symbionese Liberation Army. Despite a history of mental illness, Moore was recruited by the FBI as an informant on radical organizations in San Francisco. It is still unclear as to what motivated Moore to shoot President Ford.
Moore pled guilty and was sentenced to life in prison in 1976. Sent to the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, she escaped with another inmate in 1979 only to be captured three hours later in White Sulphur Springs. She was moved to a prison in California and released after 32 years. Now 95, she is purported to be living in a nursing home in Nashville, Tennessee. She was quoted in a television interview as saying, “I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try.”
Sources: Charleston Daily Mail, The San Francisco Examiner, New York Times, West Virginia Humanities Council, Nashville Banner.
